Railing against injustice, one case at a time

Ordinary citizens who rail against injustices they see in the U.S. guardianship system can come across as a little unhinged.

They send emails bristling with capital letters and exclamation points. They compose blogs that read like vendettas against specific attorneys. They obsess over small details, but omit from their narratives the major complications that might explain why things went against them in court.

They call journalists — who often abandon efforts to check out their stories because of the time involved. These cases are convoluted, and much vital information is sealed from the public eye.

They form their own, usually underfunded, organizations: National Association to STOP Guardian Abuse. Boomers Against Elder Abuse. Temple Gate: Challenging the Guardianship Industry. Attorneys and other professionals in the system tend to roll their eyes when they hear these names.

Sam Sugar, an Aventura physician who founded Americans Against Abusive Probate Guardianship, says he knows why people trying to tell their stories are so often seen as suspect.

“They have been so maimed and damaged by this David-and-Goliath battle,” he says. “It’s a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Elder law reform advocates on a national level take many of the critics’ points seriously. But because guardianship procedures vary from state to state, and county to county, they must struggle to make themselves heard on a case-by-case basis.

Beverly Newman of Sarasota, with her husband Lawrence, runs a small nonprofit named in honor of her father, The Al Katz Center for Holocaust Survivors & Jewish Learning Inc. A central mission — not suggested by the name — is helping elders and their families fight guardianship proceedings. Because of their web presence, they hear from people all over the country.

Newman admits that people trapped in the system often seem hysterical; she says it’s because they are caught in a situation that makes no sense to them.

“A lot of times it’s very, very easy to get defensive because accusations are flying,” she says. “You have two choices: you can address the accusations, combat them, confront them, wither under them — or you can focus on the ward. What I advise every time is, focus on the ward. This is the person who is helpless to do virtually anything on his own behalf.”

The Newmans assisted Marie Winkelman for over a year, filing briefs, helping her replace her first attorney and guardian, and walking her through the process of proving her capacity to make decisions.

But hearings on her case have been closed to them, and the court does not acknowledge them as interested parties.

“We don’t exist,” Beverly Newman says. “The court ignores us.”

The Newmans learned tenacity from their own ordeal, after Al Katz became a ward of the state in 2009. Katz, then 88, had traveled to Bradenton from Indianapolis with a nurse and a girlfriend, who put him in a nursing home and took his car, according to court documents. The Office of Public Guardian in Manatee County initiated guardianship proceedings without informing Beverly Newman.

She and her husband drove to Florida intending to rescue her father, Newman says. Instead they embarked on a legal struggle that took more than a year.

During this time, Katz lived mostly in a locked dementia ward. Newman’s ability to see her father was limited, and she was under a court order not to tell him why he was in the facility.

“I was only allowed to see him three hours a day,” she said.

Guardians have the power to restrict friends’ and relatives’ contact with a ward, on the basis that such visits can be upsetting.

“In that sense, they’re not lying,” Newman says. “Daddy would say, ‘I never thought my own daughter would put me in here.’ He would be begging me, ‘Don’t leave, spend the night here, take me home.' ”

Katz did finally return to his Bradenton home, where he died eight months later at 90. By then, the Newmans had moved permanently to Florida. They continue to deal with federal liens on her father’s property, she says, because of unpaid taxes during the guardianship period.

They also remain locked in litigation against the now-defunct professional guardianship agency, which they have accused in court filings of declaring bankruptcy to avoid their lawsuit. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011, claiming that the Florida guardianship system denied Katz his right to due process, was not taken up by the court.

Still, Newman feels some reason to celebrate.

“My father’s is a success story in a number of ways,” she maintains. “I did become the guardian of the person; therefore, he was able to come home, and that’s all he wanted in life. On Nov. 23, 2009, I went to the hospital, where my dad was almost gone. I took him off all the psychotropics and narcotics. He had to completely relearn how to walk, talk and eat.”

Almost every evening in his last days, she says, she drove him to watch the sunset at Holmes Beach.

“It was his favorite place, and he loved it,” Newman remembers. “It was aesthetic for him. When he passed away, he was on no mind-altering drugs whatsoever. This was the best we could have had as an outcome; this is something few wards are ever going to have.”

Newman sees it as a duty to her father’s legacy to take the part of wards such as Winkelman, a Holocaust survivor like Al Katz.

“Marie has had a very stable life for decades, and all of a sudden her life goes into a washing machine,” Newman says. “She can’t begin to understand the process, because no sane person can.”